Trying to capture that sweet spot in a new way

I’ve been a little negligent in posting anything Old School Hack-ish recently, and that’s because, to be honest, I’m not a very good blogger. I do better in more direct discussions and get a little shy with the whole regular news/lecture/design podium thing. Regardless, some overdue tidbitty news:

I’m traveling across the country to run an Old School Hack game over at DC Gameday next month. I’m afraid the game is full, but people always drop out so if you’re going to be there (May 14th at the AFT building downtown) post in this thread and I’ll put you on the alt list and you might get to play.

I’m putting together an actual adventure for this session rather than my usual process of running something super loosely cobbled together from on-the-spot inspiration and scrounging from my little mental cupboard of cool Old School Hack adventure pieces.

I’m hoping to fully write up and lay out the adventure after it’s been played (I may playtest it a bit beyond that) and post it here as a fun and free “introductory” module for Old School Hackers and newbies to the game alike to download and use as needed. Hopefully that won’t take too long, and I’ve got my buddy Corey of Dino Pirates of Ninja Island fame interested in helping out.

Rough sketchings of the framework of the Heroic Game have begun, but I don’t expect anything solid until I’m running a full-on Old School Hack campaign game with my guys and subjecting them to all the experimenty stuff I come up with. So it might be a little while, but stay tuned as I’m sure I’ll share notes as I go along, and would love feedback.

A new revision of the Basic Game is almost done and will be posted soon. Just some very minor quibbling error corrections and talent clarifications, nothing at all significant or game-changing.

And some shout-outs to great stuff going on around the community (Oh my gosh, I guess there’s an Old School Hack community, isn’t there?) that I should be gushing about way more than I have been:

Some fine gamers from across the ocean (Carthinius and Sirrion over in the forums I believe) are working on a German translation of the game! I’ve sent them my source documents so hopefully they’ll have something out soon. I’m totally flattered and honored and I’ve never done anything before in my life that someone has thought was cool enough to be translated into another language. In other news, Germans are awesome. I know this because my wife is half-German and she is, like, totally awesome.

The aforementioned Corey Reid of Dino-Pirates/Scratch Factory has started what we might as well consider to be the official open-to-contribution Old School Hack Bestiary over on his website, please check it out and if you’ve got some cool monsters or bad guys you’ve come up with or used in play, please post them! I’ll throw up a link on the downloads page while I’m at it here.

Programmer John Lammers and the fine folks at EpicTable have started playing around with using their system to play Old School Hack (among other RPGs) with other people online. So far the screenshots lookawesome, there’s some talented mapwork there, and I can’t wait to see more! I’d love to even try it someday, and finally break through my personal logistic hangups of online tabletopping.

Last but not least if you want to read some incredibly compelling Old School Hack Actual Play write-ups, you’ve got to check out what all-around-cool-guy M.S. Jackson has been posting over on his gaming blog Lapsus Calumni:

A couple last personal notes of pride: Just a few weeks ago my only son Miles turned one year old. Much of the initial design work on the game was done during the rare off-hours of the heady first month or two of paternity leave, and if there’s love in the game, it may well be because my heart was certainly full of it at the time.

Similarly my wife and I also just celebrated our ten-year-anniversary of meeting. Every day I wake up feeling loved and blessed, and I wouldn’t be the creative soul I’ve become without her encouragement and support. She wasn’t when we started dating, but she’s a gamer now. Did I mention she was totally awesome?

3 Comments on “Whispers from the Dark”

Thanks for the shout out (never been called “all-around-cool-guy” but I think I like it!). I have just started an online OSH game using MapTool but I will be posting some APs of that game as time goes on.

I am actually supposed to be playing in John’s game using EpicTable but we had been (resolved!) suffering some connection problems, most likely because I am currently in Iraq. Soon, you will see my madness reflected in their game as well. 😉

I’m so bummed that I’ll be missing the OSH game in DC! It would have to be the one weekend in May that I’m completely unavailable. *Sigh*

Anyway, are you taking OSH on the road this summer. Specifically, I’m thinking about GenCon, which may be in the cards for me this year.

-Tim/RisusMonkey/Ethernaut

3kirin said at 8:13 pm on April 29th, 2011:

@msjackson I find the wakfu-ness of your game quite compelling, and nearly spot-on to how I think of the OSH gameworld. I hope sometime I can play a session with you guys.

@Tim Alas Gencon is looking a little grim for me this year, but I’m optimistic about 2012. However, I’ll probably be hitting the east coast again in the later Fall, so stay tuned to the general gameday stuff and hopefully we can touch bases!

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